44 Blackboard Patents Under Review

If you work in higher education, Blackboard is the 800 pound gorilla. Now open source advocates are challenging 44 of their patents. In an effort to gather evidence of previous work they created a fascinating Wikipedia article on the subject. See History of Virtual Learning Environments. I think Douglas Engelbart is one of the more forward thinking people in this history. Invented hypertext, the mouse and early user interfaces. There is a video I’ve seen of him running a hypertext demo back in the late sixties. If you watch it, wait for the title cards to pass and you will be rewarded.
Anyway, I found the Blackboard news refreshing.